THE FOUNDATION

IN BRIEF

In an apparent response to President Donald Trump’s call to pressure Democrats into getting serious on securing the border — specifically conceding on funding for a border wall — leftists spread an image across social media of illegal alien children sleeping in an ICE detention cell. In a bit of poetic irony, Barack Obama’s former speechwriter Jon Favreau also shared the image, declaring, “Look at these pictures. This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.” The glaring problem: The photograph was from an article published by The Arizona Republic in 2014. And who was president then?

Trump responded to the fake news, writing, “Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country… Bipartisan Bill!” The whole episode sounds a lot like the recent BIG Lie about Trump supposedly calling immigrants “animals,” when he was specifically referring to the violent MS-13 gang.

Aside from this latest fake news episode, the controversy over separating illegal alien children from their parents is a result of current immigration law — law that Trump is calling on Congress to change. And while the law clearly isn’t an ideal means of dealing with the often confusing situations that can arise, the responsibility must ultimately lie with those illegal alien parents who are knowingly breaking U.S. immigration law. Furthermore, fault also lies with Obama and his unconstitutional implementation of DACA, which only served to encourage more illegals to bring children with them, sometimes as cover.

In an effort to dissuade families from illegally immigrating, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently warned, “If you cross the border unlawfully … then we will prosecute you… If you smuggle an illegal alien across the border, then we’ll prosecute you. … If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law. If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”

The truth is Trump has called for strong enforcement of the U.S. border, in part via building a wall, and has declared his desire to seek a legislative solution on DACA, both of which Democrats have resisted because they’d rather have a political wedge issue. Democrats are the ones most responsible for creating and exacerbating this problem by their continued campaign to intentionally undermine U.S. immigration law. So they can spare us their phony outrage.

To American gun-grabbers, our British cousins are admirable models. To those of us who love Liberty, however, the British haven’t changed much from when they tried to confiscate American weapons, sparking the Revolutionary War in 1775.

In 1997, the British banned most firearms in response to the Dunblane shooting a year earlier. In the ensuing years, gun crime went up until a long effort at very strict police enforcement, including raids and confiscation, finally started to bring the numbers of gun murders down. Now the United Kingdom has a “knife problem.” Which is to say, people will murder each other with whatever tools are available. It’s a sad fact of human nature that hasn’t changed since Cain murdered Abel.

Last month, we detailed how London’s murder rate surpassed New York City’s for the first time. London’s response has been a major crackdown on knives.

But a judge has upped the ante. Retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge says there should be a UK-wide program to file down the points of kitchen knives and possibly to ban the further sale of pointed knives.

“Every kitchen contains lethal knives which are potential murder weapons,” he complained in his valedictory address. “But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points? Butchers and fishmongers do, but how often, if at all, does a domestic chef use the point of an eight-inch or ten-inch knife? Rarely, if at all.” He urged knife makers to “consider preventing the sale of long pointed knives, except in rare, defined, circumstances, and replacing such knives with rounded ends,” as well as for police to offer modification services for knives that have been “properly and lawfully bought for culinary purposes.”

If that foolish argument sounds familiar, it’s because American gun-grabbers use the same “logic” to justify magazine capacity limits and gun buybacks. “Why would anyone need more than 10 rounds?” they ask. “We’re not confiscating; we’re buying back guns voluntarily,” they assure. Yet in all these examples, proponents are making faulty assumptions in order to violate natural rights.

In 2016 in the U.S., there were more than 15,000 murders. It’s true most were committed with firearms — though most of those were gang- and/or drug-related — but there were nearly 2,500 murders committed with blunt objects, poison, strangulation and hands and feet, among other methods. No one is ever going to solve the problem of violence and murder by dulling knives or limiting magazine capacity. And citizens can’t defend Liberty from tyrannical government when they’ve been disarmed.

FEATURED ANALYSIS

No doubt to the chagrin of many progressives and their Leftmedia allies, “peace at any price” is no longer the operative concept at the White House.

“Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote in a letter to Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, released last Thursday. “Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.”

After that, Trump made it clear that certain realities remain immutable. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used,” he added.

The rest of the letter was quite conciliatory. Trump wrote he was still looking forward to meeting Kim, and thanked him for the release of the hostages, a move he characterized as a “beautiful gesture” that was “very much appreciated.” He also left the door open for Kim to change his mind, calling this “missed opportunity” a “truly sad moment in history.”

By contrast, Democrats couldn’t contain their happiness at having another opportunity to bash Trump. “I think that the president’s attitude that somehow we’re bigger and stronger and you’re not is something that you would expect from a kindergarten child, but not from the president of the United States,” stated New York Congressman Eliot Engel, top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Nancy Pelosi declared that Kim “must be having a giggle fit right there in North Korea,” and asserted that the summit’s cancellation made Kim “the big winner.” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisted Trump had “weakened and further isolated the United States,” and that “mercurial diplomacy will only damage U.S. partnerships in the region and jeopardize our national security.”

These duplicitous phonies and their fellow travelers have conveniently short memories. Here are a few words, courtesy of former president Bill Clinton, to refresh them. “This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective — an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula,” Clinton stated on Oct. 18, 1994. “This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world.”

Not exactly. Despite Clinton promising more than $4 billion in energy aid, and providing supplies of heavy oil to North Korea to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program, the hard-line Communist regime continued pursuing nuclear weapons. Moreover, presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were equally ineffective in changing the trajectory of the Hermit Kingdom. Thus the notion that Trump has messed things up, or legitimized Kim Jong-un, is absurd.

In fact it was North Korea that apparently believed it had another American president so invested in making a deal he would abide threats and insults to do so. Thus when North Korean vice minister of foreign affairs Choe Son Hui referred to Vice President Mike Pence as “a political dummy” for suggesting Libya was a possible model for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program — and warned that Pyongyang could “make the U.S. taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined” — those for whom diplomacy and appeasement are interchangeable terms expected the Trump administration to ignore the outburst.

That’s because the same appeasers championed the Iran deal, despite the nation’s mullahs routinely firing up the masses with chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” They were fine when the Obama administration made a $400 million cash payment — soon thereafter revealed to be a staggering $1.7 billion payment — to the regime in exchange for hostages. They also bought the administration’s lie that it wasn’t a ransom payment, even though it was conditioned on the release of those hostages.

The Left has focused on the aforementioned assertion, first made by National Security Advisor John Bolton, that the so-called “Libya model” for relinquishing nukes was the deal-breaker, omitting the inconvenient facts that the Bush administration won that concession, while the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya led to the murder of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi. A murder former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found amusing. “We came, we saw, he died,” she joked at the time.

Nonetheless, Trump made it clear the Libya model isn’t part of the equation. As for Bolton, columnist Eli Lake has the right take, noting that he “knows the nuclear file and rogue states better than almost anyone else in the foreign policy establishment.” Lake adds, “If anyone will know a tough nuclear agreement, it’s the man who has spent the last three years trying to get America out of the weak one Barack Obama cut with Iran.”

That deal epitomized peace at any price — a reality emphasized when Obama himself admitted it would only delay, not prevent, Iran’s entry into the nuclear weapons club.

Thankfully, Trump appears committed to getting a real deal, not one where Kim gets a host of incentives such as diplomatic recognition, an end to the sanctions and a peace treaty before giving up his nukes. Columnist Harry J. Kazianis explains why, writing, “North Korea will always be North Korea, and Kim Jong Un is a brutal, lying dictator who can’t be trusted.”

Reagan was roundly criticized for that move. Three years later, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Over the holiday weekend it became even more apparent Trump’s no-nonsense approach was bearing fruit. On Saturday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim convened for an unannounced summit. On Sunday, Moon insisted Kim had reaffirmed his commitment to “completely denuclearize the Korean Peninsula” and that the meeting’s details were “conveyed to the U.S.” Also on Saturday, Trump himself stated plans for the June 12 summit were “moving along pretty well.”

Regardless, those reflexively invested in criticizing Trump’s approach to foreign policy will remain skeptical. Perhaps they might explore another president’s take on the subject: “There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.” That was George Washington, Dec. 3, 1793.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jeff Jacoby: “From the National Center for Health Statistics came some disturbing news last week: The U.S. birthrate, which has been on the skids for a decade, hit another record low. About 3.85 million babies were born in the United States in 2017. That was down from 3.95 million births in 2016, which in turn was down from 3.98 million in 2015. For every 1,000 American women of childbearing age, there were just 60.2 births last year, the lowest birthrate ever recorded. A related yardstick is the fertility rate — the number of babies each woman, on average, will have over her lifetime. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 just to keep a nation’s population stable, neither growing nor shrinking. Last year, the U.S. rate dwindled to 1.76, a 40-year low. Americans are less inclined than ever, it seems, to be fruitful and multiply. That should trouble anyone who hopes that America’s best days are yet to come. Nothing is more indispensable to the growth of any society than its human capital — the knowledge, skills, imagination, and energy of human beings. As the late, great economist Julian Simon famously argued, people are the ultimate resource in any society, since human beings over time create more than they destroy. … Government can’t make people have babies, and shouldn’t try to. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t encourage parenthood, or remind ourselves how important babies are to American success, enterprise, and optimism. America’s children are its most valuable asset, and a persistently sinking birthrate is a warning: That asset is being dangerously depleted.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Don’t try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.” —Arthur Freed (1894-1973)

Non Compos Mentis: “This is what we can do and it’s a win-win: to have a fee on carbon. So if you are raising livestock and producing a lot of carbon dioxide with your farm equipment and the exhaust from the animals, then you would pay a fee on that and it would be reflected in the price of meat, reflected in the price of fish, reflected in the price of peanuts.” —Bill “The Science Lie” Nye (“We used to joke that they would raise taxes on cow farts, and now here a guy is proposing it.” —Rush Limbaugh)

Fake news: “Ivanka Trump is facing backlash for posting this photo of herself embracing her 2-year-old son amid reports of families being separated at the Mexican border.” —CNN

Opportunist: “Now, we have this odd system with the Electoral College, and … it’s a little troubling — but nevertheless, we’ve got it. I’ve been against it, by the way, since 2000 — not that you need to know that, but I have been because I just think it is absolutely contrary to one person, one vote.” —Hillary Clinton, who would be the Electoral College’s biggest advocate if Democrat candidates had come out on top

The BIG Lie: “Take a look at any NFL stadium and people are getting hot dogs, people are getting beers. They’re not standing and saluting the anthem for a large part. They’re not. They’re distracted.” —NBC’s Andrea Mitchell

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor Mark Alexander, Publisher

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